When it comes to managing social media, making the most of your time online is critical.
But as a business owner or entrepreneur, social media management can often feel like a full time job.
As your online presence grows, so do the comments, likes and shares you need to keep up with. If you’re not careful, time slips away and you find yourself lost in a sea of noise with no plotted outcome.
That’s where social media automation comes in. In fact, 91% of the most successful social media users say they can’t live without marketing automation.
So how can you incorporate automation to improve your marketing and productivity?
Below are 5 ways you can use social media automation the right way.
1. Automate to Post at the Ideal Times
Take advantage of automation to schedule content in advance. This helps you do several things:
- Align your social content to your marketing campaigns
- Post content when your audience is online
- Free up time to actively engage
But how do you know when to post? Sure, there’s a lot of information online about the best times to post. The problem is — they’re all broad generalizations.
While they might work as a guide if you’re just starting out , they’re not useful if you have an established social presence.
No one understands your audience as much as you do. Go to your Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics and dig into the data.
In Facebook - go to Insights and look at two things:
- People - where do the majority of your fans live and which segment is engaging the most?
- Posts - which days and times perform best?
Now use that information to schedule your posts to go out at the optimal time. Use a tool like Buffer, Sprout Social, or Post Planner to add those times to a predetermined posting plan.
PRO Tip: Don’t just schedule posts and forget about them. After all, what worked yesterday may not work today. It’s important to always analyze your content and see how it’s performing.
2. Automate a Mix of Content Types
Take advantage of automation tools to create a perfect mix of content types. Make sure your posts are evenly spaced out and varied.
Use images, links, text, video and GIF’s to engage your audience. There’s no one-size-fits-all social media solution.
Test content across each channel to determine what your audience is most interested in. Hubspot is a great example of this in action. You’ll see a variety of content shared, no matter the social network.
PRO Tip: If you notice that certain types of content are no longer performing well, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Make incremental changes to boost the performance.
Change the title, description, image, or video and then look to your analytics. They’ll show you what posts are working and which ones need to be changed.
3. Automate Your Evergreen Content
What’s evergreen content? It’s content that never goes out of style. Whether you post it today or a year from now, evergreen content remains relevant.
This content will continue to perform as long as you share it regularly. That’s where automation plays a significant role.
Schedule your content into your favorite tool (any of the above will do), then cycle through them at least once a week at different times.
This can be anything from your top performing blog posts to images, guest posts, or videos.
PRO Tip: Automating your posts frees up your time, but don’t treat that time as an opportunity to kick back and relax. Instead, use it to maintain a live presence on your social media channels.
Create conversation and build relationships through continuous involvement.
4. Automate Routine Social Media Tasks
Feel weighed down by the amount you need to get done each day? Set up automation based on a particular action that takes place on one of your social networks.
You can do this through a tool called IFTTT (If This Than That).
It’s a free tool that lets you connect your various networks, then trigger an action. You can also do this through the Zapier paid subscription.
To create a task in IFTTT, you need to make your own or copy a recipe.
A recipe lets you specify a trigger for your task as well as the action that needs to be taken when the task is triggered.
Use it to add an Instagram post to Dropbox, save Twitter followers to a list or add Facebook posts to Google Drive. The sky's the limit with IFTTT.
5. Automate Your Social Media Monitoring
There are various tools that make it possible for you to monitor what people are saying about your brand, your competitors, or your niche.
That means you will no longer need to scour the internet looking for people who are mentioning your brand. Just sign up for Mention, Cyfe, or Social Fave, or one of the many other services that do the scouring work for you.
PRO Tip: Set aside time in your day to reply to comments, answer your fans’ questions, and engage in conversation. Interact in every way possible.
This will require calendar management. Add 15 minutes at the beginning and end of your day. The key to successful automation is balancing personal interaction with pre-scheduled content.
Final Thoughts
Automation can significantly boost your efficiency and save you tons of time. However, it’s crucial that you don’t take automation too far and take the “social” out of social media.
Use the time saved by automation to get “social” with your fans. Respond to questions, comments, and conversations.
Engage with your readers, communicate your message, and watch your engagement soar.